Georgia arrived in Tuscaloosa in dire need of a win over Alabama. The Bulldogs were able to get the win 66-65 in overtime when Cameron Forte hit a baseline jumper with 6.4 seconds remaining.
Game winners are great and all, but the best non-game-winning highlight of the matchup came when Georgia guard Kenny Gaines got the ball on a fast break, jumping off of two feet and posterizing the Crimson Tide’s Shannon Hale, who gets an ‘A’ for effort, but an ‘F’ on sticking the landing.
Gaines was unfortunately unable to complete the three-point play, but hey, at least he has this:
North Carolina head coach Roy Williams honored legendary former Tar Heel coach Dean Smith on Saturday by running Smith’s famous Four Corners offense during the team’s first offensive possession against Georgia Tech. Marcus Paige found a cutting Brice Johnson for a layup to give No. 15 North Carolina its first field goal of the afternoon.
Smith passed away on Feb. 7 at the age of 83, but the Tar Heels haven’t had a home game since his passing. Before the game, the school honored Smith with a moment of silence. North Carolina would go on to defeat the Yellowjackets 89-60.
J.P. Tokoto had this nice little coast-to-coast dunk past some zombie-like defenders during the win.
LSU’s Jarell Martin suddenly decided that he was in a 1990’s NBA Dunk Contest on Saturday, and threw down a between-the-legs dunk, against Florida on Saturday afternoon:
The dunk is apparently known as an eastbay, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a player do one outside of an All-Star game. Oh, LSU won by the way, 70-63, and Martin finished with 28 points and 13 rebounds.
Late on Saturday during a win over TCU, Kansas Jayhawks coach Bill Self made quite an interesting substitution, sending in team manager Chris Huey. The fifth-year senior, 6-foot-7 forward is actually the team’s manager and member of the scout team, and transferred to the school after playing for an NAIA team in Kansas City. After his lung collapsed for the third time, he called it quits, and has spent the last several years manning the team’s equipment in between mimicking the play of opposing big men during Jayhawk practices. Very commendable gesture from Self.
Jalan West, a guard for the Northwestern State Demons, had a very eventful Saturday night.
After hitting a 75-footer as the clock expired at the end of the first half, West one-upped himself by banking in a buzzer-beating three at the end of regulation to give the Demons last-second 87-84 win over New Orleans:
The long awaited @NSUDemonsMBB @jalanwest12 buzzer beaters tonight. #SCtop10 #demoNSUnite pic.twitter.com/xS08GmAmBi
— Nick Long (@NickLong_28) February 22, 2015
West finished with 36 points on 50 percent shooting. Not a bad night for the junior, who is averaging 19.0 points per game on the year.
